Common singles out NRA, Kimmel takes aim at Trump at Oscars

By BETH HARRIS

Mar. 05, 2018

https://www.apnews.com/c640574b42e249e6a1b31ebf756a491b

Link copied!

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hollywood seized the microphone at Sunday's Oscars and wasn't shy about its passions, sprinkling political moments throughout a show that included anti-gun and pro-immigration references, as well as mocking the president's Twitter habits.

Rapper Common singled out the National Rifle Association, immigrants, women's rights and the movement to prevent gun violence during a performance of his Oscar-nominated song.

His rap led into Andra Day's singing of "Stand Up for Something," co-written with Diane Warren for the movie "Marshall."

Common, an Oscar winner in 2015, also took aim at President Donald Trump.

"These days we dance between love and hate," he rapped on Sunday night. "A president that chose with hate, he don't control our fate. Because God is great, when they go low we stay in the heights. I stand for peace, love and women's rights."

The performance began with Common, dressed entirely in black, in the spotlight speaking lyrics before giving way to Day.

"Tell the NRA they in God's way, and to the people of Parkland we say Ase," Common rapped, referencing the recent mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida. Ase is a West African philosophy that means to make things happen and produce change.

The #MeToo movement, gun control and the conflict in Syria were just some of the topics discussed on the Red Carpet outside the Academy Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday night. (March 5)

He also offered up "sentiments of love for the people from "Africa, Haiti to Puerto Rico."

Common and Day were joined onstage by 10 men and women, including Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors; #MeToo movement founder Tarana Burke; 8-year-old Syrian refugee Bana Alabed; 87-year-old Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America; and Nicole Hockley, mother of Dylan Hockley, who was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting.

The song later lost in the original song category to "Remember Me" from "Coco."